The Revolutionary and the Angel
by Cruelest Sea
Summary: 1998 film, post-film. Cosette cares for Marius and waits for the doctor to arrive.


**_The Revolutionary and the Angel_**

_"For you see, each day I love you more. Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow."-Rosemonde Gerard_

His hands are still.

There are other, far more important things to draw and hold her attention, like the crimson of his blood against his leg and the grime coating him. He's soaked to the skin with water and filth and she knows she has to keep herself together, to get him warm before the cold settles in his lungs. In his condition the slightest chill could claim his life.

But she can't seem to tear her eyes away from his hands, pasty white beneath the dirt, limp against the bed, one arm flung outwards off the edge, and unmoving. Marius's hands are never motionless, constantly drifting from one gesture to the next, a wave of his hand, a tap against his temple, a flick of his fingertips as he brushes aside a stray strand of hair. Now they're still, vaguely curled, and unresponsive, as if his life has already been drained away, syphoned out in the street with the others. His skin feels chilled when her fingers brush it.

She gathers up the nearest blanket, wrapping him as best she can. Beneath the covering he looks fragile and vulnerable, like a broken toy cast aside by a careless child. She catches the hand hanging off the bed beneath the blanket, and wraps her fingers around it, cradling it tightly. His eyelids tremble, cracking open slowly, irises shifting to focus on her.

"I hoped." he whispers, and his voice is a faint rasp, a pale shadow of it's usual vibrancy, "that you would come to me in my dreams as I died." His lids flutter, eyes rolling back, and he fights it, the dark color reappearing after a brief struggle.

He's strangely calm - she can't recall ever seeing Marius so collected and not afire with the cause or love - and the hand in her's squeezes with all his strength, little more than a weak press against her fingers.

"Hush, now." She strokes his hair, a feathery brush as gentle as air that provokes no reaction, too light for his battered body to sense. He twitches slightly, a shadow of a shiver, and her hands fumble for more blankets, stretching them across him, bundling him like a child.

"Cosette?" It's a breath from a whisper and she leans close, ear over his mouth, his breath faint against her skin. "Don't leave me." The words fall out, one on top of another, the edges chipped and broken. "Even a dream, stay to comfort me." Her heart clenches, and she clasps her other hand across his, pressing it between both her hands, the chill of his skin sending shivers through her. She frictions his hand between her own, trying to warm him as his face turns paler with each breath.

"I'm not a dream, Marius." Her voice rises, off pitch and trembling. "It's over. The barricade fell. You were injured. Papa brought you home. You're safe, do you hear me? I'm here." His eyes flutter again, shifting beyond her, glazed. "Marius?" The only answer is a shudder that wracks his entire body.

Cosette climbs up onto the bed, behind him, supporting his back against her, hands clasped over his chest, the too-rapid, staccato beat of his heart fluttering against her palms as if the organ is attempting to batter itself to death against his ribs, shattering blows that overwhelm the faint puffs of air that leave his lungs. His head falls back against her shoulder, eyelids finally losing the struggle to stay awake, and she's no longer aware of how his clothes reek, the sewer water permeating the fabric and his hair, or the dried blood against the sheets, only that he's fading, perhaps _dying_ in her arms, and the doctor still hasn't arrived.

"Marius!" Her fingers grasp a handful of his shirt desperately, the thin fabric coarse against her skin, as her voice breaks. Her lips brush against his cracked and blood-stained ones, and he rouses slightly, enough to force his eyes back open the barest sliver. Her fingers catch his chin, holding his face. "Stay with me, Marius." Her voice catches and she forces the words out, the fear as she heard the battle, as she saw his face in her thoughts, tear-stained as he clung to her, the final moments they said goodbye. She had tasted the resignation in his kiss, the knowledge that he was going to his death. "I could not lose you again. I would not survive." Her fingers tighten against him, anchoring him to this world.

She hears the doctor's hurried footsteps on the stairs, nearly at the door, as Marius smiles up at her, a trembling twitch of his lips that's as frail as a butterfly's wings, in the moment before his eyes close.

But he keeps breathing.


End file.
